And Now The Screaming Starts

1973 • Dir: Roy Ward Baker • St: Peter Cushing, Stephanie Beacham, Herbert Lom

Premise: Virginal young Catherine arrives at the Fengriffen mansion to be married to her prospective husband Charles, latest scion of the Fengriffen family. No sooner are they wed than Catherine starts seeing ane eyeless, handless ghost, a painting that exerts a horrible mesmerism, and a ghostly creeping severed hand. What is it that haunts the house of Fengriffen?

Analysis: This film is from Amicus the low-budget studio that rivalled Hammer and also shared many of their stars, such as Cushing and Lom, who despite their high-ranking billing, only make small appearances in the film - Lom in a flashback, and Cushing not until half way through the film. And Now The Screaming Starts was directed by Roy Ward Baker, also a Hammer alumnus, whose Hammer credits include; The Vampire Lovers, Scars of Dracula and Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde.

Let me say straight up that this is not a good movie. It is cheesy, silly and the effects are laughable. That said, it is also a good old-fashioned ghostly revenge flick, the kind that nobody does anymore. Stephanie Beacham is delightful as the virginal Catherine, swooning and screaming her wide-eyed way through material that is as flimsy as wet paper. Herbert Lom is beautifully vile as the long-dead Henry Fengriffen, a cad, blackguard and bounder of the first order, and Peter Cushing is on safe ground as the scientifically minded, anti-superstition Dr Pope. Cushing looks frail and gaunt in this, but he still went on to do 35 more films and TV episodes after this - more than some actors do in their entire career.

The plot revolves around a curse levelled against the Fengriffen family by a woodsman whose wife is raped by Henry Fengriffen on their wedding night. The curse is directed against the first virgin bride to enter the Fengriffen house. Little of the twists and turns of the film make any sense at all, and the ghost hand is hilarious, seeming as it does to spy on people without the benefit of ears to hear or eyes to see.

The hand busily kills everyone it can get its clammy grip on, who comes between Catherine and the curse.

I'm not going to reveal the end, partly because this is a film few people are likely to have seen, and also partly because it's very silly - like something out of an old EC horror comic.

Do I like this film, well yeah, in a guilty pleasure kind of way. I wouldn't rewatch it very often, and it's really not very good, but not bad for a chuckle.

Stars: 2 out of 5